Small Business Toolkit: Hire Workers with Disabilities

Small businesses can use a variety of strategies to recruit and hire workers with disabilities. These strategies include developing inclusive hiring processes, a strong knowledge of laws and regulations, and access to talent and career development pipelines, including internships. Below are some tools to achieve these practices, help build an inclusive environment, and meet your diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) goals.

Inclusive Hiring Processes

• Planning for Inclusive Hiring and Onboarding: Create hiring and onboarding processes that are inclusive of and accessible for people with disabilities to ensure that your company can hire the talent it needs—now and in the future.
• Ensuring Accessibility in the Hiring Process: Learn about strategies to ensure your company’s hiring processes are accessible to all applicants, including people with disabilities.
• Accessible Onboarding: Refine your organization’s onboarding processes to be accessible and inclusive for employees with disabilities.
• Encouraging Self-Identification: Learn more about the role employers play in encouraging applicants and employees to voluntarily self-identify as a person with a disability.

Laws and Regulations

• Hiring Laws and Regulations: Become familiar with federal laws and regulations that impact the hiring process.
• Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA): Learn about how the ADA relates to employment of people with disabilities.
• Americans with Disabilities Act & Workplace Safety: Connect the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) regulations with the ADA.
• Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Rehab Act): Review the basics of the Rehab Act, including provisions that apply to small businesses that contract with the Federal Government.
• Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act (ADAAA) of 2008: Find out how this amendment expanded the definition of disability under the ADA, broadening the scope of disabilities to be considered and accommodated in the workplace.

Talent and Career Development Pipelines

• Talent Development: Explore how work-based learning opportunities, such as internships and apprenticeships, can help you build a diverse talent pipeline.
• Internships: Internships can be an effective strategy for achieving disability diversity. Organizations that offer internships for people with disabilities are 4.5 times more likely to hire a person with a disability than those that do not.
• Maximizing the Internship Experience for Interns with Disabilities: Explore four components of a successful internship program for students with disabilities.
• Apprenticeships: Find out how a mix of classroom instruction and on-the-job training benefits both workers and the workforce as a whole.